As promised, I want to tell you a little bit about the yearly hunt for the perfect tree. Maybe not as far back as I can remember...but from quite a long time ago, my family began a tradition for the day after Thanksgiving. Some families wake up and go shopping at the crack of dawn on 'Black Friday.' Not my family. Nope! We get up at the crack of dawn to go Christmas tree hunting. And what a tradition! It did not stop when I moved out and got married...nope! Nathan simply got added into the family and went along for the ride. It didn't stop when Christopher...or Sarah...or Johnathan graduated from highschool and moved away. Instead, we all spend the night at mom & dad's on Thanksgiving night...and then get up the next morning and head out to eat breakfast and then on to the tree farm! That evening, we decorate the tree and ooh and ahh it (have you see the Garfield Christmas special? That's sorta what we do).

Usually we end up getting out to the tree farm and acting like idiots, more than we really look for a tree. It started so long ago, and nothing has changed. When the tree is cut, we hop on the trailer pulled by the four-wheeler and ride back to the main house. It's a lot of fun, and I have to wonder if the workers laugh or cry when they see us coming!

Well...without any further adieu, here are the pictures. These are just the family/kid shots - I have so many more - but I thought these were pretty representative of years gone by. :) (Click on the pics to make them bigger --hopefully, if it works)

1999-

2000 -

This was the year we went to the "different" tree farm. Where the owner decided he needed to go shoot a deer in the middle of our hunt because, "You city folk don't know what it's like to have to kill your own food. If you get hungry, you just go right down to the Piggly Wiggly to get you something to eat." What?!? City folk?!?

2001 -

2002 -

Nathan left for the desert about 2 weeks later

2003 -

Picture MIA (I have NO clue where these pictures are!)

2004 -

2005 -

2006 -

Did you notice Johnathan? He probably has changed the most of any of us -- from the first picture (1999) till this year, he's grown at least a foot AND gotten facial hair! This is going to get a little long, but I want to also share two blog entries that Johnny wrote about last year's hunt/decorating the tree. He's such a funny kid and a great writer, so I thought I'd share a piece of his mind with you (I think that by reading this, you'll get a better picture of our Thanksgiving and "Day After Thanksgiving" than I could EVER describe or show through pictures). Here goes:

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Thursday, November 24, 2005

Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving...It's a good day...I mean, it should be a year round thing, giving thanks and all, it kinda sucks that so much of the world waits til the next to last Thursday in November to be thankful...but anyway...My grandmother and her husband came from Montgomery to eat with us, so that was fun...Oh! And lastnight, I went into my room, and Christopher was in bed, and he yelled at me...I mean, he didn't mean to...he was asleep and we're all really active sleepers...anyway, so I ended up sleeping on the couch, and there's a wood heater in there, and it was warm outside, and I barely slept at all...I was so uncomfortable...but I woke up and cleaned a bit more, and then Melissa and Nathan came, so we all visited while Mom and whoever was helping her cooked our meal for the night...

So, Thanksgiving dinner...There were all kinds of food...but I'm EXTREMELY picky. Mom grilled me some chicken, so all I ended up eating was a piece of chicken, a piece of ham, and a piece of turkey...and eight rolls. Yum! Then I was full.
After everyone was finished eating, we all acted stupid like usual...if you get all of us kids together in one place, it's crazy. We're all really weird...

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Friday, November 25, 2005

Christmas Tree!

Every day after Thanksgiving, my family wakes up super early to go get our Christmas tree. And it's alllllways cuh-raaaazy. We usually all end up in a bunch of trouble, one way or another. But we drive about 45 minutes to a huge tree farm, and we pick out a tree. If we really spent time diligently looking for a tree, then we would be there for just a few minutes, but we mess around forever. And mom and dad look for a tree. So, we finally get one, load it up on top of my brother's Jeep, and then we came back home. LSU won. Dadgummit. Anyway, Friday night, we decorated the tree. That's always an ordeal, too. We're so serious about our Christmas tree. You see, we've been adding on to our house for about 2 years or so now, and we built a nice sun room, and instead of putting the tree in the living room, like we have for umpteen years, they decided to put it in the sunroom. I'm the only kid who was disappointed, but oh well...

Oh man, during decorating the tree, there was a cat outside, and all of us kids (minus Christopher) are huge animal lovers, so we were concerned for the smittah (M's note: smittah = cat), cause it was cold outside. But Mom and Dad don't particularly like stray animals...we always tried to take them in while we were growing up. So, Dad tells me to go act like a madman. What I didn't know is that he meant to do it to just scare off the cat. You see, we have really big windows in the sun room, and I thought he wanted me to scare Melissa, cause she was standing by the window meowing or something. So I ran and put on a big coat and sneaked around the back of the hosue and hid underneath the window, and when Melissa got really close and Sarah was in there too, I jumped up and screamed...Well, Sarah sprinted into a bedroom or something, and Dad jumped straight up out of the love seat, cause he didn't know I was gonna scare anyone...and Melissa started crying, and mom started freaking out cause she didn't know what was going on...oh man...it was funny, but I felt awwwful. Man, I felt bad...anyway...I gotta get up and go back ta Montgomery tomorrow...long pointless story...
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